“The lunatics have taken over the asylum”*…
What if front pages were selected by newspapers’ readers instead of their editors? At NewsWhip, we’re always interested in the news stories people are choosing to share – and how those stories differ from the normal news stories editors put on the front pages of big newspapers. So we ran a little experiment.
On Wednesday morning, we gathered the front pages of leading newspapers in several countries. Then we used Spike to check the most shared stories from each one.
A little work at our end, and we used those most shared stories to make new “people powered” front pages for each newspaper – giving the most shared story the most prominence, the second most shared the second most prominence, etc.
We replaced headlines and pictures, though did not get into replacing story text and bylines. The results are pretty neat – maybe even thought provoking.
For each paper we have the original front page on the left, and the “people powered” one on the right. Scroll through and take a look at the contrast.
See a larger version of the comparison above, plus similar side-by-sides of The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Post, and many more at “Here’s what happens when the readers choose the front page story.”
* Richard Rowland, the head of Metro Pictures, on learning that Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffiths had formed United Artists (1919)
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As we practice preference, we might spare a thought for Robert Ludlum; he dies on this date in 2001. Ludlum used the lessons he learned asa theatrical actor and producer to write 27 novels, all thrillers, that have sold, estimates suggest, between 300-500 million copies in 33 languages around the world. Seven of his works have been made into movies or mini-series (e.g., The Osterman Weekend and the Bourne Trilogy). Indeed, his franchise was so strong at his death that his estate has been able to continue the flow of novels, contracting other thriller writers to compose under the Robert LudlumTM banner.
